


Desert Dreams

by Violsva



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, First Meetings, Pre-Canon, Temporary Character Death, Trick or Treat 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: Quynh gave up—once.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Desert Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesleepingsatellite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/gifts).



Andromache taught her to never give up.

Andromache and the desert. Quynh died a dozen times there, slowly, of thirst and heat and perhaps starvation, hoping every time would be the last. And then she saw Andromache, and wondered if she had died so many times now that she couldn’t anymore, and had somehow fallen asleep trying.

Andromache picked her up and carried her three miles to water. Quynh was mostly bone by then, so she could not have been heavy, even though she fell dead in Andromache’s arms several more times. And then Andromache dropped her into a river.

Quynh, alive at that moment, choked and gasped in water and felt it flood and renew her skin. It filled her mouth and stomach and lungs, pouring into all of her until she slumped into a very different darkness.

When she gasped back to life from that death, she broke the surface of the river and found herself in a deep still pool near the shore, where Andromache stood waiting. She swam towards her, caught her foot on the rocky bottom, and stood.

“Quynh,” said Andromache. Quynh would have smiled, but found she already was.

“Andromache.” She waded to shore. Andromache turned and pulled flatbread out of a basket. Quynh felt Andromache’s gaze on her as she ate, slowly but with increasing pleasure. After nearly an hour of carefully eating bread and fruit, Andromache moved the basket away.

She had thought she would have so much to say to Andromache if she ever met her, if she truly existed. But Andromache already knew it all, as Quynh already knew of the Horse People, the Achaeans, the dozens of lands and peoples between the western seas and this desert, the waiting and the journey. And all that needed expression was her—their—joy at the knowledge that she did exist, they both existed, still, the most unlikely and most wished-for of Quynh’s wonderings.

“Come here,” Quynh said, and Andromache leaned forward and pressed her mouth to Quynh’s, as naturally as Quynh did to her. They kissed, mouths as wet as Quynh’s hair, hands coming up to hold each other, and not once for the next three thousand years had Quynh wished for the hot dry air of the desert again.

Not now either, she swears to herself between drownings. Dryness did not end her; water will not either. Now she will wish only for release into life, not death.


End file.
